The Norm of Jesus Devotion

Employers, even the so-called "enlightened" ones, expect "job devotion" in return for all the employee perks they offer. What does Jesus expect?

Writer Dorcas Cheng-Tozun lives in the San Francisco Bay area, near the famed Silicon Valley with its many high-tech and online companies. She observes that many of these enterprises, in their drive for both productivity and profitability, use one of two approaches to how they treat employees.

One might be dubbed the "use 'em up" method. Cheng-Tozun says, "Silicon Valley ... is replete with brutally competitive workplaces that burn through well-educated professionals like expendable commodities." She cites Amazon, Apple and SpaceX as examples, and notes that in a recent biography, Elon Musk, founder and CEO of the latter firm, portrayed his tendency to treat those who work for him "like ammunition: used for a specific purpose until exhausted and discarded."

The other method is to cater to employees' needs. And here, Google is a prime example. "It epitomizes the employee-friendly workplace," says Cheng-Tozun, "with functional benefits like Wi-Fi-enabled shuttles, gourmet meals, and...